Sorting and cataloging digital pictures, automatic, face detection?

[Reddwarf4ever]

I have thousands of digital photos, I am presently sorting them into year folders with month subfolders
I need to be able to rename them by date & time using the metadata....then wish to add tags to the photos with e.g. date, location & event, then be able to,identify faces and tag with the names in each photo, hopefully the software would automatically search for face tag matches and fill in for me, presenting any photo of with no name assigned could be offered for face identification

Also need duplicate finder, as many photos have been added to multiple folders...

Need a program to achieve all this.....?
Need to have a single click auto enhance, preferably non destructive unless chosen, will work on a copy of the files.....just in case....

Hopefully when complete, I can use a filter by date, location, event, or name....

I believe lightroom can achieve all this, but can’t afford that, the acdsee offering doesn’t have face recognition (yet)

Would prefer any program to save the data to the metadata file, or embedded so can be read by any other program or even windows 10......can’t afford to take the chance in the future that the program used will always be available....

Thanks

[kpmedia]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reddwarf4ever

Need a program to achieve all this.....?

That's a tall order. I'm not aware of anything that does everything you want, and with automation to boot.

Quote:

then be able to,identify faces and tag with the names in each photo

I'm not aware of anything that can do this, at least with accuracy. Lightroom is still very hands-on, lots of training and error correction time will be required. It's intensive and time-consuming. So not really automated.

Quote:

Would prefer any program to save the data to the metadata file, or embedded so can be read by any other program or even windows 10...... can’t afford to take the chance in the future that the program used will always be available....

I've been using digital photo/cameras since the mid 90s. Even meta data changes over time. I'd not rely on it too heavily. This is why I sort manually first, then look to tag images in a program that I rarely/never update. If you're upgrading software and cameras year and year, then just realize what you did 20, 10, 5 years ago will change. And sometimes not for the better, for your current workflow.

[Reddwarf4ever]

Any recommendations then....

Maybe if I use the windows photo program, at least that may be backward compatable.........

Thought someone would have made an all singing all dancing app to simplify this task, as there must be a very healthy number of people with massive digital collections that need sorting

Thanks

[kpmedia]

If you're new to digital photo workflows, the term you're wanting is "digital asset management" (DAM). There are advances made every year, but some of what you're wanting isn't on the usual priority list. This is actually bigger than just photo, covering graphics, video, etc, sometimes even text. There are textbooks and classes dedicated to this now. I still remember when it was a new-fangled thing 10+ years ago.

With purely photo, there are competing ideas of how to do it. Not just ACDSee vs Adobe, but even camera manufacturers like Nikon have throw in their attempts in the past. It had honestly gotten to where the more you learned, the more you came confused on what is best.

Lightroom is generally considered the be-all/end-all for photo DAM.

But I never liked it. For one thing, I learned long ago to not rely on Adobe, because they have a bad habit of ignoring customer wants/needs, instead focusing on their own profit ability. So I kept up my old manually sort method, aided by Adobe Bridge. I hate those XMP sidecar files, but at least it's text viewable if needed. Adobe Lightroom database is not.

You can, of course, write metadata to the file itself, but that means re-saving a zillion images. Not an option. Honestly, most images formats suck because there's no an easy way to adjust just the metadata without touching the image as well. A fast-save option needs to exist, overwriting just that snippet, but does not.

[Reddwarf4ever]

Thanks very enlightening....

Opened a can of worms......I looked at ACdsee offering and the only thing missing seemed to be face recognition, bit according g to their support this is something they are considering......I thought search tags, e.g. location event name etc were saved to the EXIF or metadata without degrading the image....

Only other option is folders and subfolders in windows, with each file renamed with date and time in folders by location or event, whichever is more appropriate...I already started with year folders then month subfolders....

May use windows tagging......might have to settle for this for now.....really wanted to be able to type in jack + Fred and find all pictures with these two in them......but manually going through thousands of photos will be to time consuming......

Thanks

[kpmedia]

The OS does allow for limited metadata to be written/edited, without re-saving the file. But I believe that's native to the image formats, not really in general photographic terms, nor available to formats like PSD, raws, etc. Just things like JPEG.

Essentially what you want does not exist yet.

And I've been there. It took 20 years for the dSLR that I wanted to finally exist! (Nikon D810)

[digitap]

Regarding the duplicate file finder, you might want to run that first before diving into tagging, moving, etc. Beyond Compare is a great option. Regardless of what you choose you MUST understand what it considers a “duplicate” file. Some only look at size and name. Others might consider the exact same file but a different name or save date to be unique. What you really want is to ensure you do a byte level comparison, CRC, or some sort of hash comparison. This basically ignores metadata and creates a digital signature of each file. Therefore two files could be different name, extensions, etc but only if the data inside the file is exactly the same will it be considered a match. Bad part is that it can take a long time to create that hash for each file then compare them.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by digitap

Bad part is that it can take a long time to create that hash for each file then compare them.

A long, long time! I recently started doing that for some important file comparison needs, and the processing time felt as if I had gone back in time by at least a decade. And I'm using a i7-6700K, SSD with 16gb RAM. It's not often that I have to stare at blue progress bars, aside from video encoding.

[Reddwarf4ever]

Will beyond compare do the sort of comparison that you say is important / the best

Thanks

[digitap]

I believe so but it’s been a while since I used it. Here’s the website:
http://www.scootersoftware.com

[Reddwarf4ever]

Thanks everyone